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Christian Eriksen muses on a heart arrest that hasn’t affected who he is or what he does.
Christian Eriksen has been speaking about the “stupid moment” when he had cardiac arrest, claiming that a significant health crisis has not altered him.
Midway through his nation’s opening Euro 2020 match, the Manchester United midfielder passed out. His life was spared by the fast thinking and immediate action of teammates and medical personnel.
Eriksen has now made a spectacular comeback to competitive play, and at the 2023 Laureus World Sports Awards, he was recognized as having made “The Comeback of the Year.”
The 31-year-old says he is grateful to be alive but that he will not let circumstances outside his control define who he is and what he does.
Eriksen said when collecting his award in Paris: “It has been an incredible one-and-a-half years. It changed my life for the worse but the doctors and medics and team-mates got me back. I was lucky nothing serious happened. It happens, unluckily.
What I learnt from this is that it gets emotional for me when I’m around my family. I’ve been myself. I was myself anyway, only for that stupid moment. I haven’t changed my daily routine. I’ve enjoyed my life, my wife, and kids more. That’s what’s different.”
Eriksen has previously said of an incident that sent shockwaves around the world: “I felt a small cramp in my calf and then I blacked out. When I woke up from the CPR it was like waking from a dream. I don’t remember a thing from when I passed out. I’m on my back when I wake up. I feel them pressing on me. I struggled to breathe – and then I heard faint voices and doctors talking.
I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be me lying here, I’m healthy’. My first thought is that I broke my back. ‘Can I move my legs? I can move my toes. It’s not until I’m in the ambulance that I realise I had been dead. I’m thinking, ‘Keep my boots, I won’t play again’. I tell my fiancée Sabrina the same – ‘I’m not going to play again, no way’.”
Due to Serie A regulations, Eriksen was released by Inter after his fall. However, he later played again for Brentford in the Premier League and signed on as a free agent with United in the summer of 2022. Eriksen has been implanted with a defibrillator that detects abnormal heartbeats and responds to them.